Wood work

The idyllic country home they built 14 years ago is still a work in progress for Laura and Nils Soderlund.

Building the home on 1¼ wooded acres near Hampshire was the dream of Nils, who recently retired as a union carpenter.

Although Laura was happy with the family's house in Bartlett, she did her share on the new Cape Cod. This included pitching in to cut the interior oak trim, staining and finishing all the woodwork and decorating the home.

"It's every carpenter's dream to build their own home," she said.

There are a number of things the Soderlunds hope to change soon or have recently improved.

The deep, rolling front lawn under towering hickory and oak trees is well-landscaped, but they have big plans for the rear yard and deck.

Nils' plantings included hostas, lilies, lamium, ferns, ivy and periwinkle.

And he installed a retaining wall of stone slabs weighing as much as 1,000 pounds each.

He used an ancient method of rollers, levers and wedges to set the stone. This included logs from trees cut down on the property and heavy planks.

"My boys would help with some of the big ones," Nils said. "When I was setting the biggest one, I couldn't get the boys to come over, and my daughter happened to be stopping by, so she helped me."

Whenever Laura, who still works full time as a special needs bus driver for District 46, was around, she worried about her husband's safety.

"He'd get them all set, then I saw him, he'd be taking them out and moving them around," she said.

Nils, who emigrated from Sweden with his parents when he was 13, says the long front porch is his favorite place for morning coffee.

From there he watches the sun rise, prays and enjoys hummingbirds who visit the hostas.

Inside the front door is an open oak staircase where the square posts are trimmed with recessed rectangles and molding.

Nils designed the patterns for the home's woodwork and set up the machine to cut the wood. Laura ran wood trim through it, then stained and finished it.

"I think if I had to do it over again, I wouldn't do this staircase," he said. "It took so much time."

Other oak work in the house includes the heavy four-piece crown molding with many-layered corner pieces in the dining room and the fireplace wall with a bookcase in the two-story great room.

"Sometimes I get carried away and it's too intricate," he said. "I enjoy putting things down on paper and seeing how it comes out."

Nils hasn't quite decided what to build on the other side of the fireplace, an example of unfinished projects he points out that visitors would never notice.

The twin moss green chenille sofas sit in the family room so Nils and Laura can each lie down at the end of the day when it's time to relax.

The living room that now doubles as an office originally was shut off at one end and never used, the couple said.

Nils was working in another house where he built an arched doorway, so he decided to copy it in oak in his own house. The opening into the back hallway makes the room more accessible.

"Our home in Bartlett was a tract house, and he redid everything, so I told him if he built a house he had to do nice woodwork," Laura said.

The huge island in the country kitchen is an update, as is the walk-in pantry that replaced the never-used desk.

"We always hated the peninsula because you had to walk around it," Laura said, "but that's what we could afford when we built the house."

It was her idea to use green island cabinets to contrast with the natural ones around the perimeter. The island countertop is light, the outer one green.

Now they can easily entertain 25 people by serving the food from the island.

"We're thinking about a bigger window over the sink," Nils said.

Laura chose floral wallpaper patterns and borders with big, bold flowers throughout the first floor.

She also has vignettes around the home such as the arrangement of flowers, fruit, a teddy bear and a scarecrow on the kitchen island.

"It's what I call homey," she said.